But Hilary was cheerful in spite of all.  She was glad to be in this region, which, theoretically, she knew by heart—­glad to find herself in the body, where in the spirit she had come so many a time.  The mere consciousness of this seemed to refresh her.  She thought she would be much happier in London; that in the long years to come that must be borne, it would be good for her to have something to do as well as to hope for; something to fight with as well as to endure.  Now more than ever came pulsing in and out of her memory a line once repeated in her hearing, with an observation of how “true” it was.  And though originally it was applied by a man to a woman, and she smiled sometimes to think how “unfeminine” some people—­Selina for instance—­would consider her turning it the other way, still she did so.  She believed that, for woman as for man, that is the purest and noblest love which is the most self-existent, most independent of love returned; and which can say, each to the other equally on both sides, that the whole solemn purpose of life is, under God’s service,

“If not to win, to feel more worthy thee.”

Such thoughts made her step firmer and her heart lighter; so that she hardly noticed the distance they must have walked till the close London air began to oppress her, and the smooth glaring London pavements made her Stowbury feet ache sorely.

“Are you tired, Elizabeth?  Well, we’ll rest soon.  There must be lodgings near here.  Only I can’t quite make out—­”

As Miss Hilary looked up to the name of the street the maid noticed what a glow came into her mistress’s face, pale and tired as it was.  Just then a church clock struck the quarter hour.

“That must be St. Pancras.  And this—­yes, this is Burton Street, Burton Crescent.”

“I’m sure Missis wouldn’t like to live there;” observed Elizabeth, eyeing uneasily the gloomy rez de-chaussee, familiar to many a generation of struggling respectability, where, in the decadence of the season, every second house bore the announcement “apartments furnished.”

“No,” Miss Hilary replied, absently.  Yet she continued to walk up and down the whole length of the street; then passed out into the dreary, deserted looking Crescent, where the trees were already beginning to fade; not, however, into the bright autumn tint of country woods, but into a premature withering, ugly and sad to behold.

“I am glad he is not here—­glad, glad!” thought Hilary, as she realized the unutterable dreariness of those years when Robert Lyon lived and studied in his garret from month’s end to month’s end—­these few dusty trees being the sole memento of the green country life in which he had been brought up, and which she knew he so passionately loved.  Now she could understand, that “calenture” which he had sometimes jestingly alluded to, as coming upon him at times, when he felt literally sick for the sight of a green field or a hedge full of birds.  She wondered whether the same feeling would ever come upon her in this strange desert of London, the vastness of which grew upon her every hour.